Markets in Italy are freaking out today, mainly because of the pronouncement of one man, Silvio Berlusconi. The former Prime Minister plans to run for office yet another time, and Mario Monti, the current caretaker leader, has resigned, setting up new elections probably in February.

Joblessness in the Eurozone reached new highs in October, with 11.7% of the population in the member states out of work. This compares to a 10.4% unemployment rate just a year ago. And inflation has slowed, suggesting that consumer spending activity has weakened even further. 23.9% of young people under 25 are unemployed. There’s considerable [...]

European Union finance ministers and the IMF reached another in a series of deals with Greece on long-term debt. The deal will lead to the release of another tranche of around 44 billion euros in bailout funds for the country to pay its debts to creditors, including government payroll and pensions. The deal aims to [...]

European finance ministers have yet to make any decisions on the Greek bailouts. In general they have to choose whether or not to continue funding the country’s borrowing and on what terms. Will they forgive another portion of Greek debt (this is unlikely)? Will they allow the country a reprieve from meeting EU budget targets [...]

The Eurozone experienced its second straight quarter of negative growth in the third quarter of 2012, fulfilling the technical conditions of a recession. This recession is so far mild, with a -0.1% quarter following a -0.2% quarter. This is actually a bit larger than it looks because Europe doesn’t annualize its GDP numbers, so in [...]

Greece’s international creditors have delivered a minor lifeline to the ruined country, extending the deadline for when they must meet EU budget targets by two years. However, at the same time, the Eurozone finance ministers delayed the releast of a new tranche of bailout funds from Greece, worth 31.5 billion euro. Greek PM Antonis Samaras [...]

With all the talk of elections and realignments and the like, it’s good to know that there’s still some things out there you can depend on. Like Greek politicians ignoring the people as well as economic reality and cutting their budget once again. Lawmakers in Greece have narrowly backed a fresh round of austerity measures, [...]

An anonymous Spanish government official announced what is obvious to anyone perusing bond yield statistics: they don’t need to request a formal bailout from European authorities. Spain is feeling less pressure to seek European financial aid in the short term because its state borrowing costs have dropped since the European Central Bank announced its offer [...]

Unemployment in the Eurozone rose to a new high in September, with nearly 18 1/2 Europeans out of work, a rate of 11.6%. The austerity measures meant to stop a debt crisis caused an economic crisis, in other words. The jobless rate in the 17-nation currency union ticked up to 11.6 percent from the 11.5 [...]

The Finance Minister for Greece, Yannis Stournaras, claims that the country will be given more time by its international creditors to reach deficit targets, smoothing out the level of austerity required in the near term. But he might want to tell his international creditors about it. Greece had been asking for two more years to [...]

We had an entire “foreign policy” debate last night without one mention of the Eurozone, as if this has not been the main headwind for the global economy over the past year. There’s a fallacious belief that the crisis has eased, relating this to the reduction in budget deficits throughout the membership, as if reducing [...]